1.52 - Wonder Movies still sluggish.

[alias]

I think the movies dont have anything to do with performance on the machine.. Got to be some bug or some programming performance issue..

Running on a AthlonXp 2600+ , 1 GB RAM and 6600GT.

Hopin this can get fixed

 

[Smidlee]

I'm no expert but it seems to me the movies are set very low on the CPU priority list probably to keep the game more stable. Late in the game is when movies start to become a little sluggish for me but still not too bad. It would be nice to have the option for the movies run on the other CPU for those who have duel processors though.

 

[player1 fanatic]

And now I finally have something that I did not have at anytime before: a graphics glitch. Very small, just the wierd skin thing on Cleopatra. Curiously, she seems to be the only one affected.

Are we talking about same issue?

These are only 3 leaders that are affected (at least for me).

 

[Flak]

Same issue, but it's only on Cleopatra for me. None of the other leaders are affected.

 

[player1 fanatic]

I get it only for those 3 leaders.
It also happens in civilization selection screen (Play Now).

 

[Wuzupmcs68]

I also have the stuttering problems with the movies. When I switch to 1024x768 the intro movie is fixed but the wonder movies are still screwed. When I run on my normal 1200x800 both the intro and wonder movies are fooked up. Ive downloaded the patch, updated the driver, uninstalled and reinstalled the game, edited pretty much everything in the .inf file. What the hell is going on??????!!!! Other than this everything works fine and the game is awesome but I am really missing my Wonder movies .

I have all recommended requirements:
Hp pavillion laptop 2.4Ghz Amd64
1G RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon x200 128MB

Anyone had any luck with this problem?

 

[Frostyboy]

I hope the next patch will fix this...

By the Way. Does anyone know how to watch the wonder moviers (bik files) Outside Civ4? I could like to watch them how they actually look without disturbance.
The performance went from bad to real bad when patching from 1.00 to 1.52

 

[Mumin]

I hope the next patch will fix this...

By the Way. Does anyone know how to watch the wonder moviers (bik files) Outside Civ4? I could like to watch them how they actually look without disturbance.
The performance went from bad to real bad when patching from 1.00 to 1.52

Try this one:

RAD Video Tools

...which also happens to allow you watch the videos for Internet and Manhattan project

 

[Frostyboy]

Thanks Mumin!

I'll try it out

 

[Frostyboy]

Er, I just found that deleting all files in the following folder and then restarting the game has the same effect:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Data\My Games\Civilization\cache

I can't seem to find this link on my PC. Under Apllication data there's no My Games and under My Games and Civilization theres no cache folder either.

 

[Ljdjr]

What's your Operating System Frostyboy?

11. Clear the Game Cache

There is a game cache in the user profile. Apparently some config info gets saved there, so it should be cleared after every change. Look for it here
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\My Games\Civilization IV\cache (WinXP).

W2k users should have something similar in C:Windows\Profiles\...

From Fix it thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135231

Might be it??

 

[Frostyboy]

Ljdjr. My OS are: Windows XP

Graphics: GeForce FXGo5650

Processor: Intel Pentium M 735
1.7 GHz
1GB DDR-SDRAM (133.2 MHz)

But I can't find a cache file or folder under:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\My Games\Civilization IV\cache (WinXP).

And there's no Prfile folder under Windows either.

Can you help me?

 

[Ljdjr]

Frostyboy
If that's where you're looking then the only thing I can think of is that you didn't do a default install. Oh! The Application Data folder is a hidden folder by default, at least on my computer.

From here C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\ go into Tools, then Folder Options, then the middle tab, and toward the bottom of window you should see, a Show hidden folders. Click that. Hope this helps.

EDIT:re reading your post, I don't think this is the issue. Sorry. All I have is, try a default re-install?

 

[Zanmato]

I also have the stuttering problems with the movies. When I switch to 1024x768 the intro movie is fixed but the wonder movies are still screwed. When I run on my normal 1200x800 both the intro and wonder movies are fooked up. Ive downloaded the patch, updated the driver, uninstalled and reinstalled the game, edited pretty much everything in the .inf file. What the hell is going on??????!!!! Other than this everything works fine and the game is awesome but I am really missing my Wonder movies .

I have all recommended requirements:
Hp pavillion laptop 2.4Ghz Amd64
1G RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon x200 128MB

Anyone had any luck with this problem?

The main problem with the Wonder videos is how they are coded into the game. I have the same problem with skipping movies, the intro works fine. They play pretty well at the start of a game but will start getting worse as the game progresses as more of the RAM will be used. The Wonder videos are copied/scaled into another window for playback so you can close it, this put the system under some stress because it can't cope with reading, copying and playing the movie AND processing the game in the background, at least that is my understanding of it. This is why they play flawless outside the game in a standalone player. However, you can reduce the stress on the system but it heavily depends on your spec.
Firstly, turning off the MemSaver will save some of the video RAM but if you have less than 512mb of system RAM your game might suffer and slow down. This is why the patch made them worse. Changing down to 16-bit will reduce the memory needed, there is little noticable difference between 16 and 32-bit colour in videos. More strange is that some people have said that switching on 'allow screenshots' can make the video play better, I have yet to try this though. IMHO, the videos are too big (720x486 pixels@32-bit colour) and most people should notice a massive improvement when they finally get around to releasing the low-res movies and I doubt many people will notice the difference in quality.

 

[player1 fanatic]

My experience is that animations of the background should get frozen when wonder movies get played (so game should have enough time to process then).

Still, there is a bug in the game, when using some of the particualr settings (not sure which one) that make background animations still running during wonder movies, this making wonder movies sluggish.

I think antialliasing and dissallowing screenshots are some of the bad settings (could be more).

 

[numa]

hi, i used to have LOADS of problems with wonder movies and graphics... but i just downgraded the drivers for my geforce fx 5200 card (to the 61.89 ones i think)... movies do get sluggish but only very late in the game... annoyingly though the intro movie is sluggish now and wasn't before... wonder how that works...

 

[andrehudds]

pan pizza
parapa llego ao juego de la estrategia
versailles and notre dame are fooked up
movies crashed the game

 

[Zanmato]

For the movies, try this:

Go into the advanced settings for the card in Windows 'Display' control panel, turn off AA. Set to off, not app-controlled. The AA settings in the game affect the 3d elements not the videos. It could well be possible that when the video are re-rendered to play in the game, the video card is attempting to add AA to them. If it's a low end card it could well push beyond it's limit and crash out. For most others it will just slow everything down. That's my theory anyway.
I tried this the other night and got the 'Hollywood' movie playing as it should with a large map fully revealed.
Might be worth a try anyway. Will have to test some more.

 

[N3pomuk]

I can only agree If you have problems with the movies, clearing the cache and turning off any Anti-aliasing will help. I personaly think that there has to be a bigger problem behind this Wonder Movies thing, because doing all this still leaves some studdering. Now I this would not be much of a problem for me but I bought a 7800 GTX and she has problems with the movies, while still not running at full proformance. I run battlefield 2 at forced 8xAA and no problems there. so I guess I am just wondering why they arent able to get an ingame movie running right... something that was no problem in Civ2, and I had 2 megs of dedicaded vidio ram back then! IMHO they should have let it be if they can't do it right. Oh and another thing, what kindof test systems did they use and not see any problems?

PS: In case youre wondering there is also an x2 4800+, 2GB of Ram and a Raid0 to go with the GTX, so this can't be my sytem giving up. (Just upset thats all, I finaly want to see my culture victory movie)

 

[Pendle Witch]

Don`t know if this helps but ........

my wonder movies used to stutter badly and the intro movie was very jerky

Whilst on a separate project, I changed my monitor frequency from 75HZ to 60HZ

ALL MOVIES ARE NOW AS SMOOTH AS A BABY`S BUM

Don`t know if its coincidence but it worked for me - Good Luck

PS I`m in UK and I believe our recommended freqency is 60HZ - not sure if it makes a difference where u live

regards
Pendle Witch